Dan Johnson, who doesn't miss Wisconsin winters, was inspired to paint "It isn't snow" on the boards covering his front window to guard against hurricane damage to the home in Safety Harbor, Fla. family photo

My longtime Wauwatosa neighbors, Dan and Paula Johnson, talked for years about fleeing Wisconsin's plentiful snow and cold for a swimsuits-in-January place to live.

The empty nesters finally moved to Florida last year with their characteristic dramatic flair. They took their snowblower with them and attached a sign for everyone to see on the highway heading south. It read: "I won't need this snowblower in Florida, but it will remind me every single day why we left!"

That idle machine is now a whimsical mailbox holder in front of their one-story home in Safety Harbor, on the gulf side near Tampa.

So life is good now. Well, except for massive Hurricane Irma, which tracked pretty much right over their house this week. Say what you want about snowstorms in Wisconsin, but at least you don't have to board up the windows.

Paula and Dan stayed put for the storm. They did not evacuate. They talked to neighbors, controlled everything they could control and then took their chances in the face of ferocious wind, rain and possible storm surges.

The Johnsons, who met in the 1970s at Greenfield High School, are official Floridians now. They have survived their first major hurricane. Slept through it, actually, when the worst hit early Monday.

Irma, weakened as it traveled over land, turned out to be anticlimactic, at least where they live. The buildup to the storm is what the Wisconsin transplants will long remember, especially the overheated television coverage.

"It was like hurricane-mageddon. You're all going to die! Everyone is going to die! If you don't evacuate to Illinois, you're going to die! Unfortunately, one of us in the family couldn't turn that off, so we watched it for many hours," Dan said.

Paula seriously considered evacuating, though she knew Dan was all in to hunker down, and that their dozen-year-old dog, Ripley, is a not a fan of traveling.

"Friday night we had a bunch of people over. We had a little hurricane party. We drank some hurricanes and we swam in the pool. The worst part of this is the stress of waiting for it, of not knowing what it was going to do, and everybody just sort of wandering around going so now what do we do?" Paula said.

Businesses closed. The internet went down. Paula's phone kept pinging messages of concern from family and friends.

"Obviously, we have no experience at this. But we determined as the storm continued to slow and slow and slow, that we could stay where we were," Paula said.

The Johnsons had bought enough food and water, and they sunk their lawn furniture in the swimming pool to keep it from blowing around. They had purchased flood insurance and a natural gas generator that kicked in during the days their neighborhood lost power.

When it was over, they went outside and saw nearly no damage. Life is returning to normal. Dan said he has ridden out worse storms up here, including a doozy while camping in Hayward.

This is a man without regret about trading in wind chill and driveway drifts for hurricanes and tropical storms. On the boards covering his front window, he scrawled defiantly, "It isn't snow."

And the snowblower, the one some Florida natives mistook for a rototiller? Irma never laid a glove on it.